The worst one I ever met I worked for. A born again Christian and part time preacher in his church, Mr. Piper had once been an executive in Airborne Express and retired. (I worked for airborne for a time under the subcontractors in the state of Florida.) He decided to subcontract, so he formed his own company and used his buddies in the executive offices to land him sweet contracts and grew pretty big in Georgia, where he lives. He then expanded down into my area and beat out my good subcontractor, who treated us well and gave us good pay and benefits and stood up for us employees. In a ‘secret’ bid, Piper somehow managed to find out what my employers bid was and underbid him by ONE CENT per package rate. (Talk about rigged.)
This guy, for being a Christian and a Preacher, turned out to be the nastiest person I have ever worked for. He brought down his own managers, cut our pay, disposed of our benefits, offered us a medical insurance plan that was ridiculously high and no one would take. (He had to pay part of any such plan. By making sure the plan was expensive and covered little, he guaranteed few if any would take it. Me and another employee even found out that he could get a better plan at a great price by combining us with his many employees in Georgia, but he refused to.) His managers were mainly of the type to run employees into the ground and fire them if they could not keep up. His first manager was a bipolar depressive who went deliberately off of his medication and went a bit nuts. To hide the fact that we did not have sufficient trucks to handle the area, he marked in packages as delivered that he had not delivered that day, then snuck in early in the morning and actually dropped them off.
If we damaged a van, the repairs came out of our pay. We were salary and worked 45 hours a week. Later, to save him money, he redid our contract, so that we worked longer hours for the same pay. If we did not sign the new contracts we were fired. He encouraged his managers to teach us how to lie on our manifests to make it look like we were doing well when we were not, which eventually snowballed and caught up with him and us. He blamed us for lying on our manifests. Since we drove crappie ford vans, the wear and tear on those cheap things got expensive and we were ranted at for deliberately trying to ruin the trucks because he had to pay for repairs. When we slowed down to save wear and tear, we were ranted at for being lazy and not doing our jobs. I even had a man fresh from the Marines drive with us and hire on, only to quit after a week, pointing out that we needed more drivers and he was not willing to recklessly careen about the city at dangerous speeds to get the job done. He promised us bonuses that we never got. One man decided to resign, but stayed with us until after Christmas because that was when things were worst. Afterwards we were given out Christmas bonuses (about $75 per driver and $100 for management team) but this guy did not get his. The owner told him that he did not give bonuses to quitters even though the guy had been nice enough to remain to help us through the rough season. Then he stated that he had broken up the man’s bonus and given it to us drivers and if he wanted it, to talk us into giving it to him out of our checks. He always found something to bitch at the drivers about and almost never praised them. Our jobs were threatened frequently and we were forbidden to even talk about unionizing. As our loads became heavier, we needed more drivers and routes but he made us run harder until we failed and then we were accused of being lazy, were fired or quit. Anytime the Company inquired about why we were having problems, he blamed us. (He pulled me off of one route I had for years and put me on probation, saying I was lazy and not doing well. Then he poked me on a new route, griped because it took me three days to learn it and get up to speed and put another driver on my old route. Two months later, without saying a thing to me, he put three part time drivers on my old route. It could not be serviced by one full timer after all but he never admitted that he had been wrong in punishing me. Later, his manager trimmed part of his adjoining route and gave it to me, which overloaded me and I was chastised again. Piper stated that the previous driver had done my new route easily but it was taking me too long. He ignored the fact that the previous driver had not had the hard to get areas added on that his manager had given me. We lost more people when he had the area than with any other subcontractor. Including myself. (2 years after I left, I was cheered to find that he had given up the area and pulled out. Probably pressured by Airborne to do so.)
Some good Christian, huh?
Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”
